By: Dan Clark

ALBANY — When Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado agreed to leave Congress to join Gov. Kathy Hochul’s team, he expected to be in the room with the governor to help make key decisions that would guide her administration.

“She assured me that I would be,” Delgado said, explaining his decision to challenge Hochul in next year’s Democratic primary for governor.

In a lengthy interview with the Times Union’s Capitol Confidential podcast this week, he said is excited about the prospect of transforming the position of lieutenant governor, which has traditionally served as little more than a surrogate of the governor.

That’s how Hochul was treated for the seven years she held the role under former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, with whom she did not have a close professional relationship. She was often dispatched to ribbon cuttings and other small events across the state.

Hochul had promised Delgado that she wouldn’t do the same to him when he was offered the job three years ago, he said.

“That was what made the case very compelling,” Delgado said. “When you tell me you are trying to do things differently, you’ve lived through it personally and don’t want to bring that same dynamic into the relationship, I’m going to take you at your word.

”He wanted to be by Hochul’s side as she negotiated the state budget with Democrats in the state Legislature and made other decisions that would have a significant impact.

That didn’t happen. Delgado said he was tapped to lead efforts aimed at curbing hate and bias in New York but otherwise largely faded from public view.

“I just felt there was an absence of understanding what I could bring to the table,” he said, noting the relationships he’d developed both at the federal level and in the Legislature.

Cracks in their relationship began to emerge within a year of him taking office. That’s when Hochul nominated Hector LaSalle, the presiding justice of the Second Department, Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court, to become the state’s new chief judge. The role had been vacant for several months.

Hochul rallied Latino leaders in support of LaSalle, but Delgado — who is of Afro-Latino heritage — was conspicuously absent from those efforts.

The nomination was ultimately rejected by Democrats in the state Senate, who wanted the new chief judge to be more socially progressive than they considered LaSalle.

But their relationship disintegrated last year, when Democrats were divided on whether former President Joseph R. Biden should end his bid for reelection after a shocking debate performance against then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump.

Hochul emerged as one of Biden’s top defenders, even visiting the White House at one point to meet personally with the president as a contingent of her party pleaded with him to drop out. She urged him to stay the course.

Delgado shocked political circles in New York days later when he broke with Hochul and said Biden should not seek reelection.

“There were a number of instances where there were some public splits on some things by virtue that we were not on the same page,” Delgado said.

That feeling reemerged when Trump soundly won the election in November. More voters in all but one county in New York had turned out to support Trump than in 2020.

While Hochul had successfully leveraged the state Democratic Party to flip three seats in Congress from Republicans, Delgado wasn’t satisfied. He began to wonder if Democrats in New York needed to head in a new direction.

The decisive moment came when Hochul decided not to remove New York City Mayor Eric Adams from office or call for his resignation earlier this year.

Adams had faced federal bribery charges when Biden was president. But when Trump came into office, the U.S. Department of Justice decided to drop the case.

A significant faction of Democrats considered that to be evidence that Adams was beholden to Trump, and they called for his ouster. Adams has denied that a quid-pro-quo arrangement was made.

“As all these things continued to persist, I felt that we reached a tipping point in my mind where new leadership is required here in New York,” Delgado said.

After months of speculation, he finally announced in June that he would challenge Hochul for their party’s nomination in next year’s election.

It’s an uphill battle for Delgado, who’s largely unknown to the statewide electorate. Even among Democrats, four times as many said they would choose Hochul over Delgado next year in a recent poll from the Siena College Research Institute.

Other leaders in their party have largely stayed out of the political scuffle and, for now, Delgado and Hochul have stayed out of each other’s orbit.

That’s left Hochul without a statewide representative of her administration, though she’s largely brushed off the ordeal in public. When asked by the Times Union if Delgado should step down to allow her to replace him, she took no position.

“It is his decision how long he stays,” Hochul said. “But we’re managing quite well.”